Verbes de Transfert en Français et en Anglais

Verbs denoting transfer between two persons have already been partially studied in French and in English. The systematic investigation undertaken in this study is aimed at showing that the transfer predicate — in both languages — matches structures that appear in other semantic contexts. A number of criteria have been isolated to detect the verbs of transfer and a distinction has been made between lexical and expanded datives. Classes of verbs have been set up in which the syntactic property of transposition appears to be productive both in French and in English, as shown in the following sentences: Max fournit du vin à Luc — Max fournit Luc en vin. The relationship of the structure known as "dative shift" with other "shifted" structures has been clarified. A comparison between these French and English verbs has been established with the aim of using this information in an error-correction program.